Intelligent guys not preferred in IT ? Debate
My family friends son was not recruited in top notch IT companies, he had excellent academic record and had high IQ. On the other hand my friends nephew got selected for top notch IT company with average or below average intelligence. Plus he was quite horrible in spoken English, he was well versed in vernacular. This set me of thinking it is better to act Yeda and have Peda in Mumbai vernacular rather than exhibit intelligence in interviews. Guys you may not agree but for me it is true for whatever is their logic of recruiting only average guys
I had an interesting conversation with a manager in a BPO company last week. He manages an accounting process. He told me prefers a guy with good accounting knowledge but poor communication skills when he hires people. He feels people with good communication skills will easily learn stuff and before beginning to contribute, be able to sell his newly skilled skills and migrate to greener pastures outside. I beleive same is true of IT as well. You need guys with good IT knowledge but not too much intelligence and communication skills that he will learn everything and move out in less than a year.
With regard to IT industry, it has now matured. 10-12 years back, it was a green field industry with lot of uncertain situations. So you needed smart guys to be able to thrive in these conditions. Also since industry was growing at a break neck pace, one could get tremendous growth - a manager in 5 years, a delivery lead or VP in 10-12 years. Now there are lot of processes and standards in place. So one does not need too much intelligence to do a software engineer's job. Basic intelligence is sufficient. Also growth has slowed down and one would be lucky to become a project manager in 10 years today. So an uber smart guy will get frustrated.
Unfortunately education is not what matters the most. It is very important but having interview skills is what really lands you the job. You have to be able to get past the guy interviewing you, make him personally feel like he has to hire you. Otherwise, education doesn't seem to matter. I fell victim to that myself a few times. I had the highest scores possible from my university and spoke 3 languages (not common at all in the US), had specific training for one job for a full year and I still somehow botched the interview and someone else got the job. It happens. The way I see it is God is bigger than we are and for some reason that job wasn't for me. I did find out afterwards it would have been a horrible fit after all. It's odd and sometimes it is hard to accept, but if he didn't get it there is some really good reason for it. He just needs to keep trying until he finds something else.
Frankly in india IT industries are just like any other manufacturing industry. You cant consider it as an intellectual job because mainly no R&D is done in the indian IT industry. Most of the IT companies provides IT support to other industries. Do any of you know about any famous software developed by indian company?. Most probably no. (Ya infosys has some falgship ERP software but it is far from famous). So what they need in indain IT companies are hard working Baboons who will work for them day and night. Creativity and originality has no place in indian IT companies. So if the recruiters think that they can make the IT student work for them on thier conditions and be sure that he wont leave them in near fututre and waste thier training money they spent on him, most probably he will get recruited. They don't need some IT genius or some high IQ geek because they know that this people are looking for suitable environment and are not interested in their high paying job, so if they are enable to meet with that guys standard he will soon leave the company for better options. That sir is the state of IT industry in India.
Sign in to reply to this thread
